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installing a second hard drive as a slave

klockdoc

Posted 26 February 2007 - 06:25 PM

klockdoc

Member

Member

101 posts

My son has a computer that keeps coming up with virtual low memory error. I checked his hard drive and capacity and there is hardly any memory available. I have another drive out of another another computer. It is a 10 gb Western Digital caviar wd 310200. The ribbon currently connects the master and the CD writer. It is only a three connector. If I need a four connector ribbon, let me know.

what do I need to do to hook this up. What do I need to change in the BIOS or will it automatically configure?

I am running XP Pro, 256 ram. I have changed the jumper settings on the drive to slave settings.

Any help that you can provide would be appreciated. Let me know if you need anything else.

Thank you
mike

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Samm

Posted 26 February 2007 - 07:14 PM

Samm

Trusted Tech

Member

3,476 posts

Hi there

First off, you can't get a 4 connector cable as the maximum number of drives you can connect to a single cable is 2.

You said you already have one hard disk & one CDROM drive on the cable. I assume that is the only ribbon (IDE) cable in the system, right? (If not, let me know!).
If so, then you should have another IDE port on the motherboard. Look at where the cable connects to the motherboard - it will be a 40 pin rectangular socket. Next to it should be another identical socket.
The two 40 pin IDE sockets are normally labelled something like (IDE 0, IDE 1 or IDE 1, IDE2 or simply 1 & 2 for example)

What you need to do is buy another ribbon cable identical to the one you already have. This can then be connected to the second IDE port & will provide connections for up to 2 more drives (hard drives or CD/DVD drives).

Please be aware of the following :
When you have 2 hard drives & one optical (CD/DVD) drive, the ideal configuration normally is to connect both the hard drives to the same ribbon cable & have the optical drive on the second cable (i.e the second IDE port).

However you decide to arrange the drives though, you should follow the following configuration :

(a)The main hard drive (i.e the one with Windows on) should remain in it's current position i.e as a Master on the primary IDE port. This means it should be connected to the last (end) connector of the ribbon cable.

(b) whichever drive you decide to place on the same cable as the main hard drive - lets assume its the 10GB Western Digital drive - must be jumpered as a slave & connected to the middle connector on the cable.

As for the bios, it 'should' automatically detect the drives. If not, then you need to go into the bios & use the 'autodetect' utility if it has one. We can worry about that when we get to it!

**One more important thing to know...**

This applies to both of the ribbon cables : you should notice that the ribbon cables will either be marked with 'Master', 'Slave', 'Mainboard' - written on the actual cable itself AND/OR they will have different colour connectors (normally blue/grey/black). The BLUE connector (or the one marked mainboard if not coloured) MUST be the connector that plugs into the motherboard socket.

klockdoc

Posted 26 February 2007 - 09:07 PM

klockdoc

Member

Topic Starter

Member

101 posts

well, I disconnected the cd drive. Took the power off of i5t and it quit spinning. But still would not boot up. Then I removed the IDE 40 connector and it started. Still same error message as listed above, but it comes up to windows with F1 bypass.

Maybe CD drive shot craps. or it could be IDE pin in mother board. I had similar problem when trying to hook up two CD drives. Will try to fix this, then attack other later. I still have old CD drive. I could try to hook that back up to see if it is the pin socket or th e drive itself.

Start with the original hard drive, check the jumpers & make sure they match the Dual Master settings above. Do the same with the Slave hard drive.It sounds like the bios is still configured as having an optical drive as the primary slave (hence the atapi error you received). Therefore you will need to go into the bios & run the autodetect utility for the drives. If there isn't one, find the page in the bios that lists all the IDE devices (i.e drives) - this is usually the first page or the main page - & change the drive type setting for the Primary Slave from CDROM to AUTO.

If the machine doesn't boot up i.e no display on the monitor when you power on, then you will need to clear the bios.To do this, locate the battery on the motherboard - this should be a flat round silver battery. You should see a jumper next to it (it's normally the one closest to the battery). This is often labelled something like : CLR_CMOS or JP1 or JBATT or similar. It will have 3 pins wth a jumper cap covering pins 1-2.If you find it, disconnect the external power lead (it should already be unplugged I hope!), then disconnect the main internal power cable that connects the power supply to the motherboard (this is normally a big rectangular white plug with 20 wires going into it).Next, move the jumper cap so that it covers pins 2-3 instead of 1-2. Leave in this position for approx 30 secs, then return to it's original position (i.e pins 1-2). Reconnect the internal power cable.

This will return all the bios settings to factory defaults & should allow the system to power on normally.